Lieutenant-Commander Peter Angell MBE DSC Royal Navy

LIEUTENANT-COMMANDER PETER ANGELL

Born in October 1919, Peter Angell,  son of a gallant Great War officer, Lieutenant Colonel John Angell DSO MC, and Juliet Angell (neé Jolly), was educated at Christ’s Hospital School before being commissioned as a Special Entry cadet into the Royal Navy in 1937.

After a year’s training at Dartmouth naval college, he was at sea in the cruiser Southampton when war broke out.  In May 1940, in company with many other young officers, he found himself detailed off to command a small vessel evacuating troops under fire from the beaches of Dunkirk to larger ships offshore.

He subsequently joined the battlecruiser Hood, flagship of the celebrated Force H under Vice-Admiral Sir James Somerville, and witnessed the necessary but always to be regretted neutralisation by gunfire of the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir on July 3, 1940.

 Angell volunteered for submarines and having qualified in the depot ship Forth was allocated in the rank of lieutenant to the submarine Trident in June 1941. Trident, with the Tigris, executed a successful minor campaign in Norwegian waters which seriously worried the German high command. In September he was given the responsible job of British liaison officer to the Polish submarine Sokol, the ex-British Urchin, supporting her captain during two adventurous Mediterranean war patrols, General Sikorsky personally decorating Boris Karnicki with the Virtuti Militari.

          After a brief period as second-in-command of the Seawolf and having passed the exacting submarine commanding officer’s course when just 23 years old, he was appointed for three months captain of the training submarine H34.  From April 1943 to March 1945 he was captain of the newly-built submarine Sea Rover, arriving in February 1944 at Trincomalee in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) from which base he undertook five war patrols between March and September in the Malacca Straits, off Sumatra, Burma and Penang.   The decreasing availability of targets as the Japanese were driven north-east towards their homeland by the Americans caused a move to Fremantle, West Australia and two more patrols in the Flores and Java Seas.  Given the paucity of targets at this stage in the war, Angell accumulated a creditable score. With torpedoes and gunfire he sank nine and damaged a further two Japanese vessels and was awarded the DSC.  Sea Rover returned home for refit in November 1944.

          His final wartime post involved accepting the surrender of German U-boats at Londonderry. After the war a series of fairly mundane appointments culminated in a tour in the large aircraft carrier Eagle during the Suez crisis of 1956 and a final desk job in the equipment procurement division of the Admiralty.

In 1959 Angell took advantage of the generous redundancy scheme known as the “Golden Bowler” and retired from the Royal Navy. Moving to East Sussex, he became a farmer, growing crops and keeping cows, pigs, chickens, geese and ducks. He was in his element and even found time to turn out for the local cricket team in the nearby village of Blackboys.  Following a divorce from his first wife Kathleen Biggs, he married Edwina Thompson.

Another change of career followed his move to the depths of Ashdown Forest and when he took up the appointment of Clerk to the Board of Conservators and Forest Superintendent, a post that he held from 1965 to 1984. The Chairman summed up his nineteen years of service by saying: “If it had not been for Peter Angell there would be no Ashdown Forest Management Plan, no Ashdown Forest Centre and no Appeal, raising almost £1M”. His devotion was recognised by appointment to MBE.

In the City of London the Angell family had been connected with the Clothworkers’ Company since 1724, and in 1985 he followed in six ancestors’ footsteps to become Master of the Clothworkers’ Company. During his tenure he oversaw a much needed refurbishment programme to renovate Clothworkers’ Hall which had been built during the austerity post war period,  its predecessor having been destroyed during the Blitz. Angell was a member of the Samuel Pepys Club (who was also a former Master of the Clothworkers) and was for several years its Chairman.

On retirement he moved to Little Cheverell in Wiltshire where he enjoyed playing golf and the company of his grandchildren. Both wives pre-deceased him; he is survived by Mary, the daughter of the first marriage and two step-daughters.

Lieutenant-Commander Peter Angell MBE DSC, wartime

submarine captain and Master of the Clothworkers Livery

Company was born on October 7, 1919.  He died on

February 18 aged 92.